Ocelot’s voice actor believes that people should give Kiefer a chance before passing any judgments.

One of Kojima’s controversial moves for Metal Gear Solid 5 was the replacement of long time Snake’s voice actor David Hayter with Kiefer Sutherland. Its been almost two years and the backlash against this move continues. However in an interview KindaFunnyGames, Troy Baker, the voice of Ocelot in The Phantom Pain believes that people should first play the game first before passing judgments.

“I definitely think everything will…Reserve judgment until you actually play the game and then hate it if you want to which is totally fine. We live in a democracy, not a fascist state where you have to agree with what we say but there is so much that even being a Metal Gear fan coming into this game, ‘Wow! that’s what you are doing, it’s that broad, it’s that bold.”

He then talks about the complicated process of facial capture something that Kojima has been highlighting since 2011. “But again the process, watch the TV screen, you have multiple cameras on you and you could not move more than this or this [referring to his face] and you still got to make sure you are talking in person and not watching the TV screen without moving your face. Really really hard.”

He then talks about David Hayter and how he may have felt when he was replaced by Sutherland. “I really think it said a lot about the industry the fact that there was so much backlash. I know that David felt a lot of love from people. I think he felt more love than he did anger like other people’s love for him outweighed any anger that he felt but we really don’t have like Charles Martinet who’s been voice of Mario since day one but do we really have another actor that has been assigned more to a video game role more than David Hayter? I don’t think.”

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain releases this year across the PS3, PS3, Xbox One, Xbox 360 and PC.

The thing about the motion capture is that Hayter has live action experience as well. Not to say that Guyver 2 was exactly a stellar movie, because it wasn’t, but it would’ve been great to at least give him the chance to audition, y’know?

As for Sutherland, I think it’s completely reasonable to dislike at least what has already been shown in Ground Zeroes. Sure, it’s only a small portion of his overall performance, but what’s there is incredibly mumbly and often incoherent. I really hope TPP doesn’t have this problem, but it’s most certainly front and center in Ground Zeroes.

Snorlax

Completely agree with you. I wanted to give Kiefer a chance. But the man struggles even with basic lines such as : she survived. It’s becoming a running joke. He mumbles words and sounds like he just came home from drinking all day and reading stuff from a transcript with very little effort put in.
But the latest trailer they showed, he was much better. The trailer where he says that when the time comes he will kill Quiet. The only time I was ever impressed with Kiefer and it was just one line…
I really miss Hayter though. He had such a great presence and such a sexy gruff voice. Hayter = Snake. The only time I thought Hayter was not as at his best was in PW. In the other games he was spot on. With MGS1 being my favorite performance. In MGS3 he also recored so many great lines for the mini games like the Ape Escape missions. It always sounds like Hayter really puts so much soul into his VA. Something I never felt with Kiefer’s performance. 🙁

ChatWraithShichi

David Hayter, a grown man, is not going to be able to do performance capture for a child version of solid snake.